There are many types of devices in the health care industry which allow a patient situated atop a hospital bed to activate a number of communication and control functions, such as adjust bed, adjust mattress, call nurse, room light, reading light, TV and phone. One such device is located in the hospital bed sideguard, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,183,015 assigned to the assignee of the present invention. Another such device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,680,790, which discloses a bedside control module which may be releasably attached to a hospital bed siderail. These and other prior art devices generally employ one or more pushbutton or pressure sensitive type switches to activate the various communication and control functions. A common criticism of these types of devices is that a fairly high degree of manual dexterity is required by a patient in order to properly activate these devices. Accordingly, their application is relatively limited.
Various types of voice recognition systems have been developed which further tend to reduce or eliminate the need for relying on the activation of pushbutton or pressure sensitive type switches to provide for "hands free" operation of some types of equipment. In these types of systems, electronics are "trained" to "learn" to associate certain functions with a user's verbal commands, and to carry out or perform those functions upon subsequently receiving the learned verbal commands. Due to the sensitivity of such voice recognition systems, prior art communication and control devices such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,183,015 and 4,680,790 are generally ill-suited for use in conjunction therewith. For example, such prior art devices are not generally located adjacent to the patient's head when the patient is situated atop a hospital bed when the communication and control device is either an integral part of or removably secured to the bed sideguard. If the communication and control device is of the type which is located near the head end of the hospital bed, it is generally simply pinned to the mattress on one side or the other of the patient's head, and depending on the particular condition of the patient, the patient may not be able to turn his/her head toward the device in order to speak clearly into the device, thus making such devices ill-suited for voice recognition systems as well.
Other voice recognition devices are known which take the form of either a box which would rest upon a bedside table, or a headset type device which would be worn by the patient. Of these types of devices, the former suffers the drawback that the device is prone to being inadvertently activated by ambient noise as the device must have a high degree of audio sensitivity since it is not located closely adjacent a patient's head. The latter suffers the obvious drawback of having to be worn by a patient, which creates discomfort, etc.
Other types of bedside devices have been developed for more severely disabled patients who suffer both speech and motor disabilities and who, as a consequence, are not able to manipulate push-button type devices or use speech recognition devices. These include so-called "sip and puff" devices where a patient alternately sucks from and blows into a straw type device to generate electrical signals; pillow type switches wherein a patient rocks his/her head to one side to activate the switch within the pillow; tongue activated devices; and even eyebrow activated devices which are adhered directly to a patient's skin adjacent the eyebrow and which are activated upon a patient's raising or lowering his/her eyebrows.
It has therefore been a primary objective of the present invention to provide a communication and control device for use on a hospital bed which is specifically adapted for voice activation of communication and control functions.
It has been a further objective of the present invention to provide an arm mechanism for attachment to a hospital bed for positioning a communication and control module adjacent a patient's head.